Celebrating LunarNew Year

Overview

Chinese New Year, or Lunar New Year, is a huge celebration in many parts
of the world. With a prevalent East Asian and Pacific Islander community
in Uber’s rider and driver-base, we were excited to celebrate this special
occasion in our key markets across SENA (Southeast, East, and North Asia):
Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia. In partnership with
brand marketing and regional teams, we created the following illustrations
for their campaigns.

Team members / roles

Our inspiration

From Taipei to Toronto, Lunar New Year is a vibrant celebration of life, luck, and light.

From parades and special sweets like nián gāo to lighting firecrackers and
handing out hóngbāo, we sought to capture a small slice of this magical,
joyous occasion.

01/03

Year of the Rooster

On January 28th, 2017 we entered another year of the Rooster.​ When celebrating Lunar New Year, red is a dominant color as it symbolizes good fortune​.​ ​We complemented our red with orange, gold and yellow, while avoiding black and dark colors, which are considered inauspicious. We developed a custom color palette to best represent the traditions and symbolism associated with this holiday.

We featured the Rooster and drew inspiration from traditional Chinese landscape paintings of misty mountains, set against a festive firework display.

Icons

App icons

While dragons are also used for festival seasons, the lion is more commonly associated with Lunar New Year and relevant across all regions. We didn’t have time to create a hero illustration for Lion Dancing, but included one in our icon set. You may have seen these in your Uber feed depending on the available promotions in your region.

Feature Icons

The icons lean more on yellow versus red to avoid conflicts with our established CTA (Call To Action) color in marketing materials.

Visual identity

To ensure that the illustrations aligned with the larger visual identity system, we created a visual identity kit that included a custom pattern and brand palettes. Therefore regional teams were empowered with the appropriate guidelines when developing new assets for their campaigns.

CTA: Red 10

Primary: Amber 4

Secondary: Amber 7

Tertiary: Red 7

Grey 4

Grey 6

Grey 8

Black

Color weight

Thickness of bands indicates relative prominence.

Custom patterns

Custom patterns are designed to celebrate Lunar New Year

Icons

Icons developed specifically for Lunar New Year help to celebrate the special occasion.

Celebrating culture and diversity

This project is part of a larger celebration of the culture and diversity
across the 600+ cities we serve. Through custom illustrations and
branded experiences, the illustration team has created work celebrating
a wide range of special cultural occasions, like Diwali, Easter, St.
Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Black History Month and Christmas. We look
forward to celebrating many more!